Pages

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

We have always been
taught that honesty is the best policy, and that to lie is a bad thing to do.
As we grow older, we realise that in many situations it is a good idea to keep
quiet or, better still, be diplomatic and tactfully handle sensitive issues. The
line dividing honesty and diplomacy is a thin one. We have to be careful in
deciding when to be honest and when to be at our diplomatic best. We also have
to decide whether we should be absolutely candid, or use the truth as a matter
of convenience.

Our
relationships demand complete honesty, or else, we get into trouble. In a
household, for instance, the oldest member I was quite diplomatic in
commenting on the new cook’s unpalatable creations. Whatever he would cook, the
cook would always be told that the food was ‘not bad’. I would avoid
criticising the cook for the mediocre food he dished out. The situation
worsened to a point when what was cooked was almost inedible. I could not
take it anymore and screamed at the cook for serving such bad-tasting food. The
cook was taken aback. From that day onwards, everything that I had
diplomatically papered over started to show huge cracks. Daily fights and
arguments became the order of the day and, one fine day, the cook simply left.

Therefore,
diplomacy or lack of honesty can lead to deterioration in our relationships.
Before you decide to be totally frank, you must carefully analyse all
consequences of your actions. While life needs a good mix of honesty and
diplomacy, when to be honest and when to be diplomatic is a tough individual
choice. Whatever we do must make us comfortable, peaceful and happy. An honest
person will feel frustrated and restless when forced to be diplomatic against
his will, while a diplomatic one will get highly stressed at the thought of
speaking the plain truth. How to react in a situation also depends on what is
at stake. If you want to be honest and speak your mind against your boss, you
better be prepared to lose your job. If you tell your friend what you hate
about him, it might end your friendship. Once you are ready to accept the
consequences without regret or remorse, then you can be honest.

Why
do we become diplomatic when we know the obvious truth? Diplomacy is always an
escape hatch that we use to avoid hurting others and ourselves. When the boy
asks his girlfriend: “Am i looking fat?” and the girl answers honestly, “Yes,
you have put on too much weight,” one can well imagine her boyfriend’s
reactions. But if the girl speaks her mind and faces her boyfriend’s wrath out
of genuine affection for him, it is likely that he will take the issue of
weight control seriously. Diplomacy protects us in the short term, but it is
honesty that brings long-term benefits and permanent gains.

To
be completely honest, you must ask yourself, “Why am i afraid of speaking the
truth?’’ Diplomacy is for our self-protection and self-preservation. Our egos
are too fragile to accept insult and criticism. Few of us would want to rock
the boat by speaking the truth at work or home. We like to avoid
confrontations. Honesty and diplomacy, however, are not mutually exclusive. It
takes tact and courage to speak the truth at the right time in the right
manner, without being abrasive.

Saturday, October 08, 2011

The Taoists
speak of 10,000 sorrows and 10,000 joys, with the joys turning to sorrows and
sorrows turning to joys without breaking a sweat. In fact, Buddhists talk of
four sets of contrasting conditions that most of us will go through at various
times in our lifetime, namely, praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and
pain, and fame and disrepute, a set called ‘Dhammas’. The response called for
in these events, even according to our scriptures, is a balanced one, because
we must be able to see their insubstantiality, impermanence and tangible
nature.

Leo
Tolstoy said in War and Peace that “pure and complete sorrow is as impossible
as pure and complete joy”. The more we get attached with our successes and the
more we gloat in their palliative warmth, the worse will be the retribution
when we fail. William Wordsworth in Resolution and Independence said, “As high
as we have mounted in delight, in our dejection do we sink as low.”

When
the Indian cricket team won the World Cup this year, there was an overwhelming
outpouring of national joy and enthusiasm. During all the hype and celebration,
few would have remembered the retribution and stone-throwing that cricketers
faced after their losing a game in 2007. It, therefore, behoves the players,
authorities and the public to take victory in its stride and though they may
enjoy and savour the moment, they should not build sandcastles so high today
that they find themselves in the adjoining trenches of their own doing
tomorrow. Moments of joy will breed an equal and opposite reaction of sorrow in
times to come and more often than not sorrow creeps up on one like a bad habit,
sooner than one would expect.

As
a society, are we mature enough to handle happiness? The way we react to
disaster, tragedies and miseries in life is much more measured than our
response to happiness, as was demonstrated by our much calmer, cool, calculated
and measured response to tsunamis, earthquakes and other disasters; but it
appears that such is not the case with happiness. Osho said, “But when
happiness comes, it is as if the heavens are open for you and it is raining
cats and dogs, and your small hut is just in a flood…all boundaries are lost.
It is maddening.”

The
extreme reaction to art and culture is also a reflection of the same mindset,
and the intolerance that abounds also comes from a similar attitude. It,
therefore, is important that we do not go overboard but treat victory in the
right spirit.

To
remain unmoved by achievement and failure is a sign of balance and stability.
The most significant aspect of progressing on the spiritual path is maintaining
equanimity, a term which is central to every religious theme in the world. In
Buddhism, we call it Upeksha; in Patanjali’s Yogasutra it is mentioned as one
of the four sublime attitudes; in Judaism as Menuhat Ha-Nefesh or Yashuv HaHa
Ha-Da’at. In Christianity, Islam and in Hinduism, there is talk of equanimity
of response as being necessary for upward evolution and graduation to a higher
form. “Equanimity is not a dry neutrality or cool aloofness, but mature
equanimity produces a radiance and warmth of being.”

So
let us learn to be equanimous in both our achievements and failures,

Thursday, October 06, 2011

What is memory?
Memory or smriti is recreation of things already perceived by the mind. For
instance, a person may not always recollect what he ate the previous day, but
if he thinks hard, the items that were eaten will flash in the mind. Daily, we
are constantly recollecting things perceived in the past.

How
does one activate memory? There are two ways: internal and external. The
internal way is to revive the undistorted image of perceived incidents in the
nerve cells. Perception in the primary stage is registered in the unit mind
through the nerve cells, and the vibrations of those perceptions remain
embedded in the nerve cells. Some cells carry vibrations of knowledge, others
the vibrations of action. Microcosms with brains do not have much difficulty in
creating ideas at the psychic level carried through inferences because the
vibrations in the nerve cells remain undistorted for quite some time.

If
the external factors necessary for the revival of memory remain undisturbed for
some time, one can more easily recreate events already perceived. But, after a
lapse of much time, when the external factors necessary for the recreation of
that image change drastically, it becomes difficult for the brain to remember
the details of the event. At this stage, to recollect the image, one has to
penetrate the chitta of the unit mind. Of course, once an incident is
recollected, its impression remains understood for some time before it finally
disappears.

Thus
the brain is nothing more than a worldly machine for mental recollection. Its
various parts assist the mind in various ways. But the permanent abode of
memory is the chitta. So, even though an impression has faded from the nerve
cells, the mind can recreate the impression by its own power. When the brain
assists in the recollection of any event or fact it is called “cerebral
memory”.

The
human mind has three stages: crude, subtle and causal. There are also three
states in human existence: wakeful, dream and sleep. The crude mind remains
active during the wakeful state and the causal mind remains active during sleep.
The causal mind is the repository of infinite knowledge. Whatever samskaras we
recreate in the wakeful and dream states remain stored in the causal mind. When
the causal mind sleeps we call it “death”. After death the disembodied mind
floats in the vast space with its unexpressed samskaras. Later on, with the
cooperation of the mutative principle, the disembodied mind finds a suitable
physical base. The memory of its past life remains awake for approximately the
first five years of its new life. Although the child remains in a new physical
environment, mentally it continues to live the joys and sorrows of its previous
life. That is why children sometimes laugh and cry in their sleep.

To
re-experience past events one does not need the cooperation of the old brain.
The newly-born mind has not yet had time to build a close relationship with the
new brain. The revival of experiences of past lives is what we call “extra-cerebral
memory”, and is principally the task of the causal mind. Through sadhana human
beings attain a certain degree of control over the relative factors. After a
long journey of hundreds of years one begins to visualise the samskaras of
one’s past lives. He will intensify his spiritual practice and advance rapidly
towards Parama Purusha.

Saturday, October 01, 2011

When
the rich and famous are caught cheating, the common man feels good. He
feels, at last justice has prevailed. Riches bring a feeling of
resentment in others unless they are available to all. The rich might
flaunt their wealth. However, if we are true to our pure nature, our
instinct would be to share it with others. This is selfless action.
Selfish actions are condemned by all whether they are well versed in
scriptures or not. It comes from loving all, arising from the feeling of
devotion and the realisation that the world is an illusion and nothing is mine. A
guru asked two disciples to kill two pigeons where none could witness
their act. One disciple went to the forest and wrung the bird’s neck and
came cheerfully to the guru but the second disciple explored the whole
forest, the village, nearby hills and river and came back tired saying
that wherever he went he saw two eyes of the pigeon staring at him.
“Those frightened eyes
followed me everywhere, looking at my actions. You had said that no one
should witness the killing but even when i closed its eyes, they
appeared in the sun, clouds, sky, moon, water, hills, trees, birds.
There was not a space where those eyes did not follow me. I could not
kill it.” There is no escape from Nature. All its elements
witness our actions and thoughts. That is why sages called them devatas.
All Vedic samskaras are held in the presence of Nature’s elements
whether it is marriage, funeral or worship. Natural forcesregulate the
outside and the inside; devatas rule all our organs. No thought or
action goes unnoticed. However,
we can appeal for mercy, just as a convicted prisoner appeals to the
president. For, isn’t life, too, one big jail where we are prisoners of
our own thought, action and deed? Chanting God’s name, accepting
teachings of scriptures, becoming selfless, loving God and His
creation, accepting all that comes our way calmly and realising that the
world is an illusion, are ways of appealing. Seeing our changed
behaviour, the compassionate One reduces our suffering and we soon find
that our outlook has changed and our difficulties seem so tiny. A saint regularly visited the local jail to help inmates understand the goal of life, mystery
of God and His ways. One day the jailor took him to a miserable inmate
who kept saying how unjust God was. Someone had looted and murdered a
village merchant with whom he was not on good terms. But since people
had seen this man (the one convicted of the crime) with the victim, he
was assumed to be the murderer. Due to circumstantial evidence, he was
given life imprisonment. The saint met the jailor, lawyer, neighbours
and relatives of the convict and saw that everything pointed towards
him. Puzzled, the saint started spending more time with the inmate. One
day the inmate began recalling his earlier life in which he had caused
the death of a man but escaped punishment as it was deemed to be a case
of suicide. Wondered the saint: Was this man paying in this life for his
past actions? Is there no escape from God’s watchful eyes? It
is a difficult question to answer. However, it is beneficial to perform
only such actions as are deemed to be positive – and that do not hurt
another – whether one is being watched by God or not.